


That Thing You Do

by lindenwaverly



Series: Thingsverse [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Anal Sex, Friends to Lovers, Inspired by Brideshead Revisited, M/M, Post-Canon, Rimming, alcohol mention, death mention, mid-century gay literature is something that can actually be so personal, mild internalised homophobia, the author works out her complex feelings about the British class system
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-23 03:20:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30049116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindenwaverly/pseuds/lindenwaverly
Summary: After the war, Ernie has no plans. Justin takes care of him.(This has absolutely no relationship plot-wise to Trying New Things, but it's set in the same universe so they're posted together. If you are, for some god-forsaken reason, reading this weird rare-pair then I salute you)
Relationships: Justin Finch-Fletchley/Ernie Macmillan
Series: Thingsverse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2210541
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	That Thing You Do

“I think we should set fire to your bed,” said Justin.

“It’s your bed,” said Ernie. “It’s - didn’t you say some king slept in it?”

“Maybe. Possibly. I think my Great Aunt Ernestina just liked to say various royals had touched all the furniture she liked so that we could never throw them out.”

“Your family,” said Ernie, rolling his abandoned tumbler between his palms. “Merlin.”

“Hmm. Well. We may be unutterable posh wankers, but you can do magic. So.”

“You can do magic too.”

“Yes. I really am unbearable, aren’t I? But not as bad as this bed.”

There were sixteen mahogany cherubs on the bed – Ernie had counted them on his first night here – all arranged in varying positions of menace along the frame. Swooping from on high, clambering up the frame to peek at the mattress or curling round the columns to smile at them with malicious glee.

“I may be a bit sauced,” said Ernie, “but I can’t escape the feeling that they’re planning to catch me fucking the wrong person in here and them blackmail me for it.”

Justin snorted inelegantly into the pillow.

“What have you been getting up to in my ancestral home, Ernie?”

“Nothing yet.” His eyes were locked on the most gruesome cherub. He felt that if he blinked the little fucker would move. “Why did you put me in here again?”

“I told you, it has the most comfortable mattress.”

“I think you’re torturing me.”

“Only a little. Let’s have more brandy.”

“Very well,” said Ernie, and let his eyes slip closed.

By mutual unspoken consent, they were spending the summer drunk.

After Ernie’s parent’s funeral, Justin had taken him to a little tea shop in Knightsbridge where he had sat there and let Ernie pour it all out – or as much of it as he could, anyway. The year they’d spent apart. The alone-ness of it all, without Justin there. The things the Carrow’s did. And Justin had just taken it.

Then they’d gone back to school for eighth year, because what else were they to do?

Eighth year had – happened. He’d studied nine, ten hours a day, throwing himself into restless sleep when he couldn’t stomach it anymore. Sometimes there had been Hannah or Justin or Susan at his shoulder, telling him things. Sometimes there had been food at his elbow. Somehow there had been a handful of O’s in his palm, as he collected his diploma from McGonagall.

“Where will you be heading now, Ernie?” she’s asked him, and the future had dropped like a sinkhole in front of him.

And then Justin said - “Oh, he’ll be spending the summer with me.”

They’d apparated straight from the Hogwarts gates, ignoring Hannah and Susan’s pleas to take the train one last time for the old day’s sake. They’d landed directly on Justin’s doorstep – because of course they did, it was a Muggle home without wards. The Kent countryside had undulated gently around him in all directions, a change so sharp and striking from the craggy moors around Hogwarts that it had seemed to banish them. They couldn’t be the same world – one so dour and black and mournful, and one so, so -

Ernie had abruptly noticed that it was sunny.

“What will we do?” he said, and it was a question so vast it made his voice shake.

Justin had considered him for a minute. Justin considered everything.

“Well,” he said. “We could start on the cellar.”

What did they do?

They had a picnic on Justin’s lawns – one of Justin’s lawns. “The south lawn,” he’d announced. “It’s sunnier. And we can see the lake.”

“You own a lake,” said Ernie wonderingly. “I can’t believe you just – own a body of water.”

“Hogwarts owned a lake.”

“Hogwarts was near a lake. That squid recognised no masters.”

They didn’t make the picnic, because neither of them knew how to cook and Justin apparently had -

“A housekeeper,” said Ernie, after meeting Mrs Leftwich. “So she - I don’t know what a housekeeper does.”

“She keeps the house,” said Justin, in the lofty tones of one who didn’t know either.

“Do you have any other servants?”

“They’re not servants, that sounds horrible. They’re staff. And yes, we’ve got Mrs Leftwich, and Mary – that's the maid – and Pankhurst, who’s - “ He stopped, coloured.

“What does he do?”

“Don’t laugh.”

“I absolutely will.”

“He’s the butler,” said Justin, and Ernie clutched his stomach and howled.

“Good god. Do you have a valet?”

“No!” said Justin, and then at Ernie’s raised eyebrow - “But my father does.”

Pankhurst, unfortunately, was not a white-gloved old man with inaudible footsteps. He was around thirty-five, Cockney, much sharper suited than anyone Ernie had ever seen before, and apparently completely aware of magic.

“There’s no point trying to hide it from Pankhurst,” said Justin, when Ernie jumped up in horror after Justin had levitated a book in complete open view. “He knows everything. I think father left the decision between Hogwarts and Eton entirely up to him. You’re not with the old man, Pankhurst?”

“He told me to come keep an eye on you,” said Pankhurst, with an extravagant wink. “Keep you out of trouble.”

But he seemed to take his duties lightly, so for the most part they existed without any eyes on them at all. They ate dinner in a dining room with a surprisingly lewd version of Titian-hued heaven stretching above them on the ceiling, Justin laughingly explaining every bit of cutlery until they gave up. They explored each separate garden – there were fourteen in total, including the ‘wilderness’ that as far as Ernie could tell was just a farm – and got drunk in each of them. Justin took Ernie to the ballroom and whirled him around and they laughed because it was a joke, it was just a joke, it was always just a joke.

That night, Ernie stumbled to bed and stroked his cock and imagined a world where Justin had kept whirling him. Where neither of them had ever been told that this wasn’t what men did with each other. Where they could just be.

Such a sad, pathetic fantasy.

The thing about Justin was he was so well bred. Ernie felt that was the real difference between them. His parents had raised him his whole life to make sure everyone knew how important and posh and clever he was, and then Justin came along who actually was so very important and posh and clever that it would have been tactless for him to bring it up at all.

Next to him, Ernie felt like a sweaty little fool. Last summer, Justin had lent him a copy of Brideshead Revisited, and Ernie had scoured the book three times wondering if it was a coded message about what a gormless hanger on he was.

But Justin let his guard down around Ernie and let himself say the awful things he couldn’t say in front of other people, like –

“I can’t go out in the circles of my parent’s friend’s children, Erns. They’re all partying it up in Knightsbridge and I’m left out because the only way my parents could explain me not going to Eton was to hint at some kind of scandal. I imagine they think I was found peeping on the neighbours or cutting up a cat or something.”

Or –

“That’s the problem with being a wizard, Ernie. I never actually get around to using the Phantom, because it’s so much easier just to apparate everywhere.”

Ernie had nodded vigorously, not wanting to display that he didn’t know what on earth Justin could be doing with a ghost, but it turned out that a Phantom was a very nice type of car that Justin’s driver took them out through the countryside in.

“It’s a shame no one really goes for drives anymore,” said Justin, staring out the window. “I’d have made a marvellous 1920’s motorist. It’s just like a walk, but dryer.”

They didn’t end up staying dry, though – they walked up the hill after the Phantom parked to set up their picnic and ended up getting caught in a sudden torrential downpour and sprinting back to the car, rain drops the size of marbles exploding against their skin. In the car, Justin pushed up the partition between driver and the backseat and stripped out of his wet shirt, laughing as he did so. And Ernie – Ernie looked away. 

That night, Justin padded into the room with two glasses of brandy and settled on Ernie’s bed, levitating one over to him. Justin liked to use little bits of magic in front of Ernie the way he didn’t with other people. It was probably because of the way they made his face light up. Justin didn’t want anyone to know that he still found it all a tiny bit exciting.

Of course he would, especially now. Especially after the year he’d spent away.

“I wanted to come back,” Justin had said, when they’d met in an awful muggle tea shop just outside Knightsbridge. Kensington. Kent. All the very posh places seemed to start with a K. His handsome face was twisted miserably. Susan had always called him ‘a bit bland,’ but Susan had no taste. “But my parents wouldn’t let me. I thought, maybe I could – maybe I could just forget magic. Go to uni and live a normal life.”

“Forget me,” said Ernie, and Justin had reached out and twined their hands together and said nothing. Well. Hufflepuff wasn’t known for their bravery.

“You seem down,” the real Justin said, the one sipping his brandy in a fur-lined dressing gown.

“I’m wondering what the fuck we’re doing.”

“We’re drinking copious amounts and desecrating my beloved ancestral home.”

“Long term, Justin. Eventually your parents will come back – “

“They won’t. They loathe this house. Father might come down here to hunt, but he’ll probably stay at the lodge on the edge of the property.”

“All right, but eventually my – “ He tried to think of who else might come looking for him, now that his parents were dead. Maybe Susan? Hannah hadn’t really liked him. “Eventually I’ll need to get on with a life.”

“Do you want to?”

“Nobody fucking wants to, Justin. I can’t stay here forever.”

Justin was rubbing soothing circles across Ernie’s thigh that weren’t very soothing at all, staring out into the middle distance. “You could. I’ve got more than enough money in my trust fund, and eventually my parents will have to die.”

“Fuck you.”

Justin cringed. “I’m sorry. I really am.”

“What am I meant to do, just stay here? Be your pet? Let us pretend that we’re still living at Hogwarts, that everything didn’t go to shit? Sorry, I forgot. All you do is pretend that everything’s fine.”

“I’m trying to take care of you,” said Justin, his voice hoarse. “I failed, all right? I know I did. Everyone else looked after each other and I buggered off and ate caviar for a year. But you’re here now, and you’re not doing well, and apparently even after all you did nobody cares enough about you to – “

“Get out.”

Justin ignored him. “Because you weren’t a bloody Gryffindor! Somebody should have kept you safe, and you’re not ok, you’re not – “

“Get. Out.”

Justin didn’t even look at him. He just sighed, an impossibly rare sound, and walked away.

“People did care about me,” said Ernie, before he could reach the door. “They did. Do. I was fucking Anthony Goldstein on and off for most of the war.”

“Let me know when he sends you an owl,” said Justin, his voice acid, and slammed the door behind him.

Ernie ate in his rooms.

He desperately missed house elves, because he had to sneak to the kitchen like a thief to grab some bread and cheese long after the dinner gong had sounded. Justin must have sat in that dining room alone, furiously using every piece of cutlery correctly as a form of revenge. Or maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he’d just eaten by the fire, lazily stretched out on the couch and wondering what had gotten Ernie into such a snit.

Ernie was rather wondering himself.

But what was he meant to do? Just live here, dancing attendance on Justin’s guilty conscience? What happened when Justin got tired of him, when Ernie became an obligation? What happened when Justin got married? Nothing like this ever lasted. “If only it could always be like this – always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe - “ But it couldn’t. Someone always fell in love with someone’s sister, or became even more Catholic, or drank too much. The summer ended, and only the differences remained. Justin was otherworldly, and Ernie couldn’t touch him.

Oh, but he wanted to touch him – and the thought always stopped there.

“You can’t,” he said to himself, alone over his sad plate of cheddar in that beautiful room.

He woke up in the middle of the night and padded down to the lake, wrapped in three of his most thread-bare jumpers. They were getting a little tight on him. Well, he’d put on weight. Or rather, he’d gone back to his old weight. Not that it mattered much – even during the war, when they’d been rationing out scraps from the kitchens in the Room of Requirement, he’d still looked doughy at best. Anthony hadn’t cared. Anthony had never seemed to care about bodies that much – only pleasure, and blinding amounts of it.

He’d been half in-love with Anthony. The affair had felt like being visited by Apollo from a moon-lit grove, or Hermes stealing in through his window. And if those thoughts raised the ghost of Justin with his expensive classical education, recounting stories to Ernie over candlelight – well, there was a reason Ernie was only half in-love.

And Justin was right. Anthony hadn’t sent him an owl.

“Would you welcome company?”

There was Justin, hovering awkwardly in a great fur coat as if he didn’t own everything to the horizon.

“I didn’t think you’d be up.”

“I needed a smoke.”

“I didn’t realise you smoked.”

“Yes, well. I’m trying to hide it from you.”

“Not terribly successfully.”

Justin looked awkwardly down at his feet. “I needed a cigarette about as badly as I needed to talk to you as soon as I saw you out here. I figured I might combine the two.”

“Well, in that case, please join me on my rock.”

“It’s a nice rock,” said Justin, settling there. “I used to come out here to watch the koi swim.”

“Koi?” said Ernie, before he could remind himself not to be an idiot.

“They’re a type of enormous ornamental fish from Japan. Look here - “ He knelt down and wiggled his fingers in the water. The moonlight picked out the hollow caverns of his cheekbones, the dark pits of his eyes. A landscape of a face. Not Apollo or Hermes – nothing ethereal about him. He was from a different mythology – lines of doomed poets marching off to world war one, stiff daguerreotype faces in their best suits, Saki hissing to put that bloody cigarette out.

“They must be asleep,” said Justin. “I’m sorry. Do fish sleep? I don’t know.”

“You’re always explaining things to me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m - it must get annoying.”

Justin laughed, drawing out a sterling silver cigarette case. “You’ve spent the last six years explaining everything about magic to me to stop me from tripping over my own robe. I don’t mind telling you what a koi is. Do you want one?”

“They’ll kill you, you know.”

“I dread that less than the fires of your disapproval now that you know.”

He looked down. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to – I'm sorry.”

“Oh Ernie,” said Justin, and his throat clenched tight.

“I didn’t know you were queer,” said Justin. Ernie’s mouth was dry, and he couldn’t speak. “But then, I suppose you didn’t know I was queer either. I tried raising it with you once, in a rather roundabout way. Left some bait, I suppose. You never took it.”

“You did?”

“I leant you Brideshead Revisited, do you remember? I half-hoped half-dreaded that you’d ask me why I wanted to read a book about two men like that.”

“Oh, that’s - “ He almost laughed. “Oh, thank god. I thought – I thought you leant it to me because I was being Charles.”

Justin froze. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t really know, I suppose. Following you around and impinging on your kindness. Breaking into Arcadia and demanding it for myself.”

“Is that what you think Charles does?”

“Well it is, isn’t it? He ruins everything.”

“I don’t know,” said Justin, his voice low. “I don’t think so. I think – Charles created Arcadia. It wasn’t Arcadia for Sebastien, until Charles came. They made it together. And it’s not his fault that he wasn’t in love with Sebastien.”

“He should have been,” said Ernie, suddenly irrationally angry. “He should have. Sebastien was the best thing in his life. He could have had everything he wanted if he’d just – just loved the person who deserved it, the person who created him.”

“He didn’t owe him that.”

“It’s not about owing. It’s about – Sebastien was the one who made him happy. And he didn’t see that. Couldn’t see that. I just can’t imagine being that blind. It frustrated me, I suppose.”

“I’m surprised you’re such a defender of Sebastien. I think a lot of people don’t like him. Charles is the one we’re meant to admire, even love. He brings Sebastien to life. And yes, it all goes wrong – but don’t you think it was worth it? For just a taste of that happiness? Arcadia can’t last, but isn’t a life better if one spends at least one summer there?”

“I don’t know. I think that - “ He stopped himself. “I can’t stay here forever, Justin.”

“I know.”

“And all I can think about – all the time – is that it will have to end. I suppose that does make me Charles. Worse than him. Ripping it all down before it’s begun.”

“Even if you can’t stay, you can always come back.”

“You can’t stay here forever either. I know you, you won’t.”

“I might, if I knew that you were coming back to me. If I knew that my work was here, making a good, safe place for you. Then I could feel useful.”

He reached out a hand, settled it on Ernie’s knee. Ernie’s stomach was in knots, and there was something lurking under this conversation, something he couldn’t look at head on.

“You don’t need to be useful, Justin.”

“What do you need?”

You, and arcadia, and those are the same thing, he almost said. “I’m cold,” he said instead, because he was a coward. “Let’s go inside,” and Justin extinguished the light of his cigarette.

Of course it had to end.

Because you couldn’t just keep walking around with a shimmering lake of adoration kept tight in your chest, could you? You couldn’t live like the knights of old, pledging yourself to courtly devotion from afar. You couldn’t hide yourself away from the world and build a place for love. Nature abhors purity. Everything must be soiled eventually.

It happened like this – another picnic in another gilded garden, an unexpected downpour, a sprint to the nearest greenhouse. Justin stripping out of his sodden jacket and uncorking another bottle of thousand-pound wine with his teeth.

“You should get out of those clothes, Ernie. You’ll catch a chill.”

He wrapped a hand around his stomach. “No, it’s ok. It’s a bit parky in here.”

An obvious sodding lie, of course. The air was positively tropical with trapped sun-warmth and a dozen little heaters each aimed at individual plants. Fecund orchids, tremulous succulents, coiling vines still rich with figs. Like a sweltering little glass Eden.

Justin frowned. “Don’t be silly. You know how sensitive your lungs are. Strip down and I’ll fetch some blankets – I know mother used to keep some in here for company.” He disappeared towards the back of the greenhouse, and Ernie reluctantly peeled away his sweater. His jeans were splattered with mud from the run over, and he kicked those off too. Which left him in just his t-shirt and boxers. And his socks, something he remembered a second too late when Justin rounded a fern, his long, angular body cast silver from the rain.

“There’s only one blanket, I’m afraid,” he said, like he couldn’t see Ernie standing in his socks like a total wanker. He laid it out carefully over a deep bench topped with plush green cushions. “We’ll just have to share.”

“Fine,” said Ernie, diving under the blanket before Justin could notice that he was getting hard. The rain was hurling itself against the glass as if furious they’d escaped its ravages. The world had disappeared. Isolation made him feel safe and vulnerable all at once. The old game – _what would you do if you were the last person on earth?_ The last two people, in this case. Decades of them with just each other, learning how to keep up the vegetable garden and pickle it for the winter months, working their way through the library. The house and grounds becoming their entire world, a bountiful kingdom. A last beacon of civilisation on an empty planet. It had a sickening sort of appeal. One wasn’t meant to romanticise the apocalypse.

Justin settled in next to him, thighs pressed together. 

“I left the glasses,” said Justin. “We’ll have to drink from the bottle. Do you mind?”

“When have I ever minded?” He took the offered bottle and a deep swig. Justin’s mouth was stained purple from the wine, ripe-strawberry red at the centre and bleeding almost blue at the edges. Hadn’t the ancients had a saying about that? _The wine-dark sea._ He wondered if his mouth was stained the same way.

“I hope it lets up soon,” said Justin, peering nervously at the sky. “I can’t imagine sleeping here. I suppose it could be quite fun. We’d get to see the sunrise, at least. Wait, which way is east again?”

“I’m not sure. Where’s the sun?”

“Behind all those fucking clouds, I’m afraid.”

He laughed weakly and tried to bunch up the blanket over his erection without being obvious. Justin’s skin was still a little damp where it pressed against Ernie. He felt like his flesh was overheating. It had been so long since he had been touched by anyone but Justin. His body had learnt that touch, absorbed it into itself, and now it felt like a part of him. Here was his hand, here was his arm; here was his desperate need for Justin’s embrace. The wine trembled in his hand.

“So were you and Goldstein serious?” said Justin.

Ernie nearly dropped the bottle.

“You know as well as I do that I haven’t seen him since the war, Justin.”

“I thought perhaps you might have had a tiff.”

“About what?”

“I don’t know. Lovers quarrel, don’t they?”

“I don’t know if we were really lovers. _Fuckbuddies_ might be more accurate. I don’t think I’m the kind of person who has lovers.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, I don’t know. A lover is someone you run away to Paris with, isn’t it? He didn’t exactly spend hours with me tangled in bedsheets discussing our thoughts on art. We made each other come and then he kissed me on the forehead and told me I was lovely, and that was it.”

“What a bastard,” said Justin with feeling.

“Don’t say that.”

“I’m sorry, but he was. What just – just _using_ you for sex, not caring about who you were inside – “

“A lack of conversation was rather the nature of our arrangement – “

“Then he should have made a different bloody arrangement.” Justin’s voice was heated. “He was your first, wasn’t he? You deserved someone – someone who would be tender to you.”

“He was plenty tender,” said Ernie. He didn’t know why he was defending Anthony exactly, who certainly didn’t need his protection. But just the thought of Justin peering at Ernie’s abortive little sex life and wrinkling up his nose – “I didn’t need tender, anyway. There was a war on. We thought we were going to die every single day. We ran missions and we dodged curses and then we came home and threw our bodies against each other just to remind ourselves that we were still alive, and I’m sorry if that sounds disgusting to you, I’m sorry if you think there should have been hand-holding and candlelit dinners, but you don’t understand because you weren’t _there._ ”

Justin cringed like he was in pain. “I didn’t mean it like that – “

“What part of it offends you, exactly? The part where sometimes he bit me and I was so relieved to feel another human being that I actually cried? The fact that sometimes I’d fuck him up against the wall in some shitty corridor of the castle and I could almost taste how stupid we were being in his mouth? How about – “

“Stop,” said Justin miserably, “please stop.”

“Why should I?”

“Because you’re getting me hard!” he roared, and then covered his eyes. “Jesus wept, Ernie. I know you don’t want me, but this is – this is just cruelty.”

Ernie opened his mouth and found nothing on his tongue. His throat was plugged tight, a blockade of oily shock past which no words could trespass. He couldn’t speak, and he couldn’t breathe until he found something to say but there was nothing to say, no clever words, not even a fucking syllable, and so he couldn’t breathe and his lungs were screaming –

“I’m sorry,” said Justin, his face still covered. “I’m so, so sorry. I was a coward and a fool. I’ll take any punishment you give me, darling, I know I deserve it. But not this. Please, not this.”

“What are you _talking_ about.” It came out far more harshly than it should have. He meant: _put this down in plain terms for me._ He meant: _no ambiguity, because I cannot take a chance on anything less than certainty. I don’t understand. Please, I don’t understand._

But Justin was just staring at him, his face gone completely blank.

“Do you know,” he said, mild as if he really was just discussing the fucking weather, not the entire course of Ernie’s life, “I think I will brave that rain now. It looks like it’s died down a bit.”

It hadn’t, of course – it was still screaming at the windowpanes, and Ernie half-hoped the roof really would come down and pierce him through his stupid, useless heart. But it didn’t, and Justin walked through the doors and out into the garden, disappearing into the gloom in just his boxers. And through it all, Ernie just sat there.

Ernie lay in the greenhouse and drank the rest of the bottle of wine on his own. Thematically every swallow of it should have tasted sour, curdled with the thing he’d just ruined. But it was a very good vintage. Notes of raspberry, he thought. Maybe plum. He was no sommelier.

 _I know you don’t want me_ Justin had said.

 _I’m trying to take care of you._ He had also said that.

_I’ll take any punishment you give me, darling._

Eventually the rain began to lessen, and he pulled on his half-damp clothes and walked back to the house. Halfway there he began to consider that the doors might be locked against him, but there wasn’t much he could do about that now. Perhaps he could apparate back to his own house. As far as he knew, nobody had been in there since his parents died, but the bills had been paid automatically from their vault – his vault now. It wasn’t much, but it kept the lights on.

_I know you don’t want me._

_I’m trying to take care of you._

_I’ll take any punishment you give me, darling._

It wasn’t much of a house anyway. Oh, it was a nice enough place, tucked into a corner of Surrey, but he didn’t want to go and live there. Perhaps he’d sell it. He needed the money anyway. He could put down a deposit on a nice flat in London.

_Darling._

_Punishment._

He shouldn’t have waited this long to start finding a job. A lot of the best placements would be eaten up by now. That’s what he should do tomorrow – go back home and start circling items in the Prophet. He’d always vaguely thought about working for the Ministry, but now it came down to it he found he hadn’t a clue what department he wanted to be in. Definitely not Law Enforcement. He’d never cared overmuch for sports or creatures. He probably wasn’t clever enough to be an Unspeakable, and something about that idea made him shudder. Maybe he should broaden his ambitions, apply to Gringotts to be a cursebreaker. It was a dangerous life, but perhaps he could become the sort of chap accustomed to danger.

He was so focused on not thinking about Justin that it was almost a shock to walk into the house and find Justin sitting on the stairs, a glass of whiskey clutched loosely in his hands. He was dressed again, thank god. A high-necked white cream jumper, well-fitting tan trousers that showed off his thighs.

“I didn’t bring your clothes,” was all Ernie could think to say.

“That’s all right,” said Justin. “I have others.”

They were just staring at each other across the hardwood expanse of the floor. Ernie tried and tried to find the right thing to say. _What did you mean, ‘punishment’? What did you mean, ‘don’t want you’? What did you mean, ‘darling’?_

“I know I’ve rather buggered everything up,” said Justin. “But I would appreciate it if you didn’t leave. I know that’s what I would want to do in your position – “

“I don’t want to leave,” said Ernie, desperately finding it was true. “Justin, I never want to leave.”

Justin’s jaw fell open. He shut it, swallowed, eyes fixed on Ernie. “All right,” he said, sounding heavy and weary. “All right, then. Would you care for a nightcap?”

The room was starting to spin a little from the bottle of wine, but he still nodded. Justin shut his eyes, something like finality on his face, and then gestured for Ernie to follow him.

Justin didn’t have a room – he had rooms, multiple, all lush with William Morris wallpaper and cherry-wood panelling. Victorian glass sconces gave the room an amber-gaslight glow, sinister and comforting as a Christmas ghost story. A dark-brown Chesterfield sofa, a liquor cabinet hidden inside a globe, a chaise-longue worth of a laudanum binge. There was a piano glittering darkly in the corner, a lopsided pile of sheet music tilting precariously at the edge. Ernie’s own room back home had had a hand-knitted throw from his Nana and a rather colourful clock.

“I didn’t know you played,” he said, wandering to the piano and flicking through the books. A schizophrenic collection – Mahler, Lennon, Shostakovich.

“Only indifferently,” said Justin. “I’m afraid there’s no ice in here. What’s your poison?”

“Whatever you’re having. Only a small one. I finished off the last of the wine.” How bastardly casual he managed to sound while saying that. _I drank a bottle that probably cost the same as your car – pour with a light hand, will you?_

“All right. Small whiskey it is.” He handed a glass to Ernie and settled at the piano. “I used to be quite good, for a while. Not prodigy level, obviously, but decent enough that it wasn’t embarrassing when mother got me out to play at parties. But then, you know, teenage apathy set in.”

“You should start again.”

“I still play when I’m in a mood. You don’t know how lovely it is to sit down when you’re furious and really thunder out some Brahms.”

“Glass of whiskey on the piano.”

“Hair Heathcliffianly dishevelled.” He ran his hands through his hair, leaving it looking almost exactly the same as before.

“Oh, that’s not it – “ Ernie set down his glass and had his hands in Justin’s hair before he realised his mistake. But he couldn’t _not_ do it once he’d started – it was already odd that he’d paused. So he moved closer and ran his fingers forwards and back, curling them through the cowlicks at the front, fluffing it under his fingers. And through it all, Justin stared back at him with the agony-ecstasy of a Catholic saint.

“That’s more Bronte-an,” Ernie whispered, though he hadn’t the faintest idea what the hair looked like now. He couldn’t tear himself away from Justin’s eyes.

“Sweetheart,” said Justin like a plea. Then he leant forward, eyes locked together, and lifted up the corner of Ernie’s shirt to kiss him on the hip.

It felt like being branded. The shock went right through him, every muscle frozen as he dealt with that kiss. His cock was instantly achingly hard. Justin swiped his tongue across Ernie’s skin. And then he reached and flattened his palm across Ernie’s cock. Ernie doubled over as if in pain, gasping, and Justin pressed again and Ernie wrenched himself away, focusing very intently on not coming in his pants.

“I’m sorry,” said Justin, rising trembling to his feet, supporting himself on the piano.

“Don’t _apologise,”_ said Ernie through gritted teeth. “I just thought I was going to – “

“Oh,” said Justin. “ _Oh._ Can I - ?”

His hands gripped Ernie’s jumper and peeled it away, and then his shirt, and then he was up against Ernie, his mouth on Ernie’s neck. Ernie reached back and gripped the piano, because he couldn’t touch Justin without ruining this. The tongue on his neck was re-writing his nervous system. And then Justin kissed him and his body was no longer his own. They were grappling, mouths missing each other more often than they kissed, lips trailing across cheekbone and jaw and chin in an ungainly mess. Justin was shedding their clothes with quick careful fingers. All Ernie could do was grip him over and over again – his arms, his sides, his hips – re-affirming the shock of _this_ body under _his_ hands.

“Bed,” said Justin decisively, manoeuvring them through the door without letting go for a second. They went crashing into walls and stumbling across the rug, landing on the bed more through chance than skill. Ernie kicked off his trousers and tried to get his thumb inside the waistband off his boxers to peel them off too. His hands were shaking. He was shaking all over. Reality was beating at the walls of his brain and howling bloody murder.

_Punishment._

_Take care of you._

Justin was naked now. Ernie couldn’t quite bring himself to look down, terrified of finding out exactly how hard or not Justin was. 

_Punishment. Take care of you._

“Stop!” he gasped, and wrenched himself away. His back collided painfully with the bedpost. He curled into the foetal position, shuddering like a trauma victim pulled from the wreckage. Shame encased him like amber round a fly.

“Ernie – “ Justin reached for him.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said, and Justin’s hand flinched in the corner of his vision. He kept his eyes half-unfocused, watching the sprigs of forget-me-nots on the eiderdown blur into each other. “It’s not – you don’t owe me this. Don’t do this to yourself, Justin.”

“I don’t understand. Did something – happen to you?”

“I’ve let you take care of me. _Let you –_ god, how ungrateful. I’ve lapped up every second of it. I’ve run around rubbing myself all over your house, your gardens, your cellar. And now your body.”

“I thought you liked it.”

“I’ve loved every second of it. How could I not? I just didn’t – “ He turned his face into the comforter to suppress his sob. “I didn’t realise it was a punishment for you.”

“Punishment? Oh, because I said – I was jealous, darling. A green-eyed idiot.”

Ernie looked down at himself, begging the tremors to stop. His soft little belly. The small rolls of fat in his lower back, the patchy trail of golden hair across his stomach, his blotchy red skin He sweated a lot during sex. Thank god Justin didn’t know that. Thank god he’d never know that.

“It’s just the guilt,” he said, keeping his voice even. “You don’t really want me. You just missed me.”

Justin cursed and flung himself back into the pillows with a thwack. “Ernie. You pillock. You have driven me half-wild with desire since I was fifteen.”

“But – “

“Yes.”

“But at fifteen, I was – “

Awkward and short and blushing constantly, driven half-mad with hormones while aware that puberty seemed to be only distantly affecting his body, an ugly child next to Justin’s tall, cool form.

“At fifteen you were adorable, and you squeaked whenever we spoke about sex. You still purse your lips when we talk about it – you did when you told me about fucking bloody Goldstein, thank you very much.”

“I’m a prude. A grubby, awkward prude.”

“Grubby, no. Prude? Uptight? Delightfully innocent? Yes, and brand me as a sinner because all I’ve been able to think about whenever you get like that is doing unspeakably tender things to your body until you’re flushed all over and barely coherent.”

“Stop.”

“Because you don’t like it?”

“No, just – “

“Then I won’t. I’ve imagined so, so many times the way I’d talk you through fucking me for the first time. I imagine you wouldn’t be able to speak, wouldn’t be able to look at me because you’re so embarrassed. But you’re hard, and so eager and so wanting – oh, Ernie. Ernie. I want to hold you, and kiss your head while you fuck me, and tell you how wonderful you are. I want to rile you up till you’re too turned on to be ashamed and fucking me into the mattress. The first time you say something dirty to me I might actually come without being touched.”

“I sweat during sex,” said Ernie, because it was his last line of defence.

“You sweat during everything. Like almost everything about you, it has been incorporated so thoroughly into my fantasies that just the slight of you a little damp gets me hard.”

“Justin – “

“I want to strip you naked and kiss every part of your body until you know how wonderful it is. I want to hold you late at night while you whisper things you’re too ashamed to say in daylight. I want to get us both drunk so that you no longer care about the noises you’d make.”

“Do you want to fuck me?” said Ernie, and knew Justin had caught the inflection – fuck _me_. Please.

“Oh, Ernie. Yes. Yes so much.”

“I think I might – I might like – “ Justin was pushing him, moving his awkward little body around until he was face down on the bed, a pillow shoved under his hips. He felt Justin working his underwear down, then reaching up to stretch his arse apart. He nearly broke at that, at the shame of Justin seeing this secret place.

Justin leant forward, kissing his shoulders, his neck. “You are wonderful. You are sincerely wonderful.”

He felt the rush of air as Justin summoned a bottle, heard the sounds of slick behind him.

“You tell me the second you don’t like this,” said Justin commandingly. “The second you want me to stop,” and Ernie turned his head and bit the pillowcase to stop himself from saying that there was nothing Justin could do to his body that he wouldn’t like.

He’d been the one to fuck Anthony, mostly. Mostly. One night he’d asked, blushing, and Anthony had opened him up with his fingers until he came on the shitty mattress they’d sometimes shared, eyes unfocused with tears.

Justin, determined to one-up everything apparently, started with his mouth.

“Fuck,” said Ernie, and gripped the sheets to stop himself from crying out further. But it was Justin. Justin deserved the sounds he made if he was so determined to keep them as a reward. So when his mouth dipped lower, tonguing along his balls, Ernie let himself moan. Let himself shake a little when Justin moved his mouth back up to run his lips along the rim. Justin did something complicated with his tongue and Ernie cried out, pushed back into it before he caught himself, caught himself catching himself, and pushed back again.

Justin was moaning too, soft little sounds that sent his breath over Ernie’s hole, and he was so embarrassed and turned on that he thought he might cry. Maybe scream.

“Oh my god,” Justin whispered. “You’re indescribable. Ernie, darling – “ And then his tongue was back, so delicate and soft.

“You can’t – “ His voice was choked. “You like this?”

Justin pressed a kiss to his buttock. “I love this. Seeing you get wet and desperate. Seeing you scrabble at the sheets. You are a lovely thing, Ernie.” There was the pop of a bottle, and then a finger probing delicately at him. “Is this ok?”

“Yes,” he muttered, cheeks aflame. “Yes, that’s – “ The finger slid in, and he felt himself flutter around it. “Oh. Oh yes please.”

“So unfailingly polite,” said Justin, a smile in his voice, and then his tongue was back, tracing around the finger. “So good for me. Darling. Spread your legs wider, will you? I want to see you.”

He did. Somehow the shame was only making him harder. Desecrating Justin like this – Justin who had been like a god to him for so long, Justin who could make people listen to him with a word, who said only polite and calming things. It felt like fucking in a church. It felt wonderful. He wanted to cry.

“I’m going to fuck you now, if you think you’re ready.”

Ernie screwed up his eyes. “Please.”

And then Justin was pushing into him in one smooth, clean stroke. His hands rubbing circles on Ernie’s hips. He cried out, and Justin was crying out too.

“Fuck, you’re tight.”

There was nothing to say to that that wouldn’t make him combust. He lifted his hips, pushing back on Justin’s – Justin’s cock, he could think about it now, it was inside him, he was allowed. It felt like lightning.

“Jesus,” muttered Justin, and then he started thrusting. “Darling, I’m not going to last.”

I’m not either, he wanted to say, but all he could do was pant. He sounded ridiculous. He was sweating, of course he was – but Justin lent down and kissed behind his ear, licked a stripe down his neck.

“Talk to me,” Ernie begged. Tell me what’s going on. Make me understand.

“You’re – fuck, you have me lost for words, darling. You don’t know how beautiful you look. I feel like I’m debauching a nymph. The way you flush – the little sounds you make – I love you, you know that? That’s what I want, a lifetime of waiting on you on bended knee and serving you sweets and brandy and sucking your cock anytime you like. I love you so much, I do.”

“You can’t.” He felt near tears. It was indescribable. It was magical. It was - “You can’t.”

“I do. It’s the sweetest torture, loving you like this. Like Lancelot loved Guinevere. Ernie, I can’t - I can’t hold back from you. I give you all of me. There’s nothing you can’t have.”

“I love you,” said Ernie, before he could stop himself. Before he could let himself stop. “Justin, I love you, and I - I - “

Justin stroked his thumb lightly along his cock, and he came. He didn't mean to. It was too much – his brain reeling and his heart bursting and his cock throbbing and nothing made sense, and oh god Justin, Justin was going to think he was an idiot – but then Justin was coming too, planting wet, messy kisses along his collarbone. It was everything. It was almost too much. It was too much.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” he said, half-breathless with – oh, every nameable human emotion, and some unknown ones too.

“I did,” said Justin. “I leant you my favourite book.”

They detangled, wiped down, and re-tangled again. Ernie let himself touch. His hands felt new, afraid. Would he ever learn to touch Justin? What had he done before he was allowed to do this?

“Oh god,” he said. “I’ve just realised something. I left on my socks again. We made love for the first time and I left on my socks.”

“Oh really?” said Justin, his face pressed into Ernie’s collarbone. “Abominable manners. Get out of my bed.”

The wind was still shaking the windows, and the faintest of draughts was playing over his naked skin in a pleasant contrast to the warmth of the fire. When Ernie turned his head, he could see the ragged edge of Justin’s thumb resting on his shoulder. He must have been biting his fingernails again.

“I know you still have to leave,” said Justin. “But - not yet.”

“No,” said Ernie. “And I’ll come back. I’ll always come back.”

He did, surprisingly, end up getting and owl from Anthony Goldstein somewhere around the beginning of November. It read -

_Dear Ernie_

_It feels weird writing to you like this. I guess we never spoke much, did we? But it felt weirder not writing to you._

_I spent the summer in New York. I didn’t let you see me much towards the end of the war. I didn’t let anyone see me, I suppose. I just disappeared. I heard you disappeared too. Send a letter to Susan and Hannah sometimes. They don’t say it, but they skirt your name in conversations in a way that speaks to a very Hufflepuff kind of worry. You’re all so repressed. It’s odd, don’t you think? The house of nerds can’t stop pouring their feelings out onto every surface; the house of friendship keeps things locked up. Sometimes I wonder if the hat has drifted over the years – if we make up what our houses are more than our founders ever did._

_Anyway, fuck the hat. Everyone keeps telling me that I’m really Gryffindor, given what we did – I suspect you’ve heard that as well. Fuck them, too. Come and visit your old friends at uni. Try and drag Justin along, if you know where he is._

_Anthony_

“He can’t have you,” said Justin, reading over his shoulder. “I’ve staked my claim.”

“You’re adorable when you’re possessive. Anyway, he isn’t like that. He was bouncing between me and Padma during that year.”

They didn’t end up visiting anyone at university. He wrote back to Anthony, telling him he was all right, and wishing him the best. Anthony would drift on into someone else’s bed. Ernie had all he needed.

Susan and Hannah ended up visiting over Christmas. Only Hannah was meant to stay for Christmas day – Susan had her own Bones family obligations – but on the actual morning Susan took one look outside and said “Oh bugger it, I only ever liked my aunt anyway.” They ate chestnuts by the fire, and so many chocolates that Ernie began to feel a little queasy. Hannah and Susan recounted their exploits at university to much hilarity.

“It’s just irritating,” said Hannah, explaining some complex story about two Gryffindor boys that Ernie barely remembered. “Ending up a side-note in someone else’s story.”

“I think that’s the Hufflepuff house motto,” said Justin, deep in his wine.

“Not Susan,” said Hannah, kicking at her foot until Susan explained, red-faced, that actually she had met someone, and would they like to meet him one day?

“They’ve met him,” said Hannah. “It’s Blaise Zabini.”

“Good grief,” said Ernie.

“Oh, don’t you start,” said Susan.

“I’m glad you're happy,” said Hannah later, as Justin and Susan did awful posh people things over by the piano. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you happy before. You were always just – busy.”

“I thought you didn’t like me.”

“I didn’t, at school. You always had such a way of lecturing. But I missed you when you weren’t there. I suppose it didn’t matter if I liked you or not. We were friends.”

“Do I still lecture?”

She kissed him on the cheek. “Yes. But it’s part of your charm. And anyway, now you keep getting distracted by Justin mid-sentence. It’s adorable. Are you going to stay here, then?”

“I might. I suppose eventually I’ll have to get a job.”

“Doubt it. Justin’s the eighth richest man in Muggle England, don’t you know.”

“How do you know that?”

“Parvati’s terrible magazines. What do you _want_ to do?”

What he wanted to do was read. He’d been devouring books in Justin’s cavernous library – Wharton and Waugh and Hardy and Fowles. It wasn’t often, but sometimes something about a male character just pinged inside his head. He re-read Brideshead Revisited again, and it felt like coming home, or walking into a bar where everybody knew your name. These very faint traces of men who had been like him, jotting their story down in the margins. One night he put down _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ with tears glittering in his eyes. Perhaps, in some odd way, he was fulfilling a promise to these men. It was too late for them, but he could go upstairs to Justin in the un-cherubed bed they shared and kiss him senseless.

“Is there a job that’s just – reading?” He was lying in bed with Justin, port singing in his veins. “And talking about books? I suppose I could be a librarian, but – that doesn’t feel right, somehow.”

“You could go into academia,” said Justin. “You might have to go to a Muggle university to do it.”

“That wouldn’t be so bad. A clean slate. But won’t they ask for my school records?”

“Hogwarts has a way for covering for that,” said Justin. “I - “ And then he coloured.

“You checked, didn’t you?”

“Yes. Long before the war if that makes you less angry. I wasn’t sure which world I wanted to live in.”

“I’m not angry. Justin. You know I’m not.”

“I would be if I were you. There were so many times I wanted to run away. Second year, that’s when I checked. With the whole Heir of Slytherin thing.”

“I - “ Ernie’s heart clenched. Finding out that Justin had been petrified – there weren’t words, for that kind of fear. Looking at his frozen form in the infirmary bed, trying to hold his stiff fingers. He’d snuck in and spent nights there, trying to talk Justin back to the land of the living.

“Hey.” Justin’s hand was on his jaw. “We survived, didn’t we? And we’ll probably survive the next thing, too.”

“You think there’s going to be a next thing?”

“We’re wizards, Ernie. I think unfortunately there will always be a next thing.”

“We’re Hufflepuffs. We can leave Harry Potter to deal with it.”

“Hmm, yes. Good point. You’ve earned it.”

“You don’t - “ He took Justin’s head into his hands. “You don’t have to earn anything, Justin. You can have whatever life you want. It’s yours.”

“I’ve certainly never earned anything in my life.”

“Stop joking.”

“I’m not.” He stroked Ernie’s brow. “I still can’t believe – well, the you of it all.”

“Me neither. You – you're – That's why the word love exists, isn’t it? It’s such a paltry little word, but it covers so many unnameable things.”

Justin flushed deeply and buried his head on Ernie’s neck. “You know, there’s actually a lot of very good universities near here.”

“Really?”

“I reckon you could get into one. Just let me dress you for the interview, please. You lot always wear such funny things.”

“All right,” said Ernie. “I’ll apply to a university in Kent and you can spend your money on a new wardrobe for me. That’s a solid plan for the future. Shall we stay here forever, then?”

This was the promise fulfilled, bursting golden through the soil into the sunlight – he and Justin, entwined in bed. Planning a life together behind these walls. An arcadia that no one could snatch away from them. And he could tell the stories of those men in the library – tug the glittering strands of marginalia from the edges and hold them up to the light.

“You know,” he said, “I think perhaps we should.”


End file.
